Estimates of cancer incidence and mortality in Europe in 1995
Introduction
Over one-quarter of the global burden of cancer occurs within Europe despite the fact that Europe's inhabitants comprise only approximately one-eighth of the world's population. The major public health challenges arising from an increasing cancer burden in Europe led the European Commission in 1987 to establish a collaborative policy on cancer control. The ‘Europe Against Cancer Programme’ identified four separate areas for action, namely data collection and research, information and health education, early detection and screening, and training and quality control.
The European Network of Cancer Registries (ENCR) is one of the main activities within the first area of the Programme, and seeks to improve the quality, comparability and availability of cancer data, promote their use in cancer control, healthcare planning and research, and provide regular information on the burden of cancer in Europe. Currently, the ENCR has a membership of 152 population-based cancer registries, who regularly submit information on the incidence and mortality of cancer in their catchment area to the ENCR secretariat, housed in the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The data are then formatted and included in the latest version of the EUROCIM software package [1]. EUROCIM provides ENCR members with a resource to compare their own incidence and mortality datasets with data from other European cancer registries, and a fundamental aim of the software tool is to promote communication and collaboration between members on issues such as data quality and cancer research. At present, approximately 30% of the European population of over 700 million reside in areas covered by cancer registries.
This paper examines the geographical variations in cancer burden and risk in 1995 in the European countries within the four United Nations (UN) defined regions (Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western Europe) using the most recent incidence and mortality data. To do this, we have complemented reported incidence figures from nationwide cancer registries and mortality data from the World Health Organization (WHO), with national estimates obtained using a method which incorporates the high-quality incidence and mortality data available from the cancer registries of Europe.
This report follows the methodology and style of presentation of several previous publications examining cancer burden in the European Union in 1980 [2] and 1990 [3]. The motivation behind this set of estimates for 1995 is the availability of more up-to-date information on cancer incidence and mortality in EUROCIM [1], as well as recent datasets published by national cancer registries. As part of the ‘Europe Against Cancer’ Programme, the ENCR is continually expanding, improving the quality of information on cancer burden in areas where previously less was known, such as in Eastern Europe. For the first time, we can provide estimates of the cancer incidence and mortality for the whole of Europe, using a consistent methodology, incorporating the many local and national cancer data sources available.
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Patients and methods
Cancer incidence and mortality estimates in 1995 are reported for the 38 countries in the four areas of Europe for which the UN supplies population estimates and projections. Details are provided in the map of Europe (Fig. 1). Incidence and mortality data are summarised for 25 common cancer sites, together with an estimate of all cancers combined (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer, ICD-9 140–172, 174–208). The primary cancers considered are oral cavity (ICD-9 140–145), nasopharynx (147), other
Results
Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5, Fig. 6, Fig. 7, Fig. 8, Fig. 9, Fig. 10, Fig. 11, Fig. 12, Fig. 13, Fig. 14, Fig. 15, Fig. 16, Fig. 17, Fig. 18, Fig. 19, Fig. 20, Fig. 21, Fig. 22, Fig. 23, Fig. 24, Fig. 25, Fig. 26, Fig. 27, Fig. 28, Fig. 29, Fig. 30, Fig. 31, Fig. 32, Fig. 33, Fig. 34, Fig. 35, Fig. 36, Fig. 37, Fig. 38, Fig. 39, Fig. 40, Fig. 41, Fig. 42, Fig. 43, Fig. 44, Fig. 45, Fig. 46, Fig. 47 display the sex-specific incidence and mortality rates (age-standardised using the European
Discussion
This study provides an overview of the cancer incidence and mortality in European countries, documenting the extent of disease burden and the variations in the risk of developing and dying from cancer. The methodology is consistent with previous studies estimating cancer incidence within the European Union 2, 3, 7.
Several sources of data have been used in generating the statistics—for some countries, national incidence was available from national registries, for others, it was necessary to
Acknowledgements
The research was undertaken with the support of the European Network of Cancer Registries project of the European Commission, Grant No. S12.299682 (2000CVG2—020). The estimates were made using incidence and mortality data from the EUROCIM database of the European Network of Cancer Registries. The contributions of the individual registries is gratefully acknowledged—a list of ENCR Members is attached as an Appendix. We would also like to thank Maria de Ia Trinidad Valdivieso Gonzalez of the Unit
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2018, European Journal of CancerCitation Excerpt :Europe carries a significant load of the global burden, with one-quarter of the estimated cancer cases in 2012 occurring on the continent despite a total population that comprises 9% of the world's population [1,2]. Through its programmes of collaboration with population-based cancer registries in Europe, members of the European Network of Cancer Registries (ENCR, http://www.encr.eu/) have provided estimates of cancer burden at the European and EU member state level over the last 30 years [3–9]. In this article, a collaboration between the ENCR, their Secretariat housed at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), estimates of cancer incidence and mortality is provided for 25 most common sites in 40 European countries for the year 2018.